Magdalena Adamek

Magdalena Adamek holds Master of Arts in Piano Performance from the Chopin Academy of Music, Warsaw, Poland, and Doctor of Music in Piano Performance from the University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada. Her principal teachers include Professor Barbara Hesse-Bukowska and Professor Jacques Després. She has also participated in masterclasses under renowned pedagogues, such as Halina Czerny-Stefanska, Andrzej Jasinski, Paul Badura-Škoda, Stêphane Lemelin, Kyoko Hashimoto, and Kevin Fitz-Gerald.

Currently Magdalena serves as Assistant Professor in Collaborative Piano in Department of Music at Virginia Commonwealth University where she teaches chamber music ensembles involving piano, oversees the chamber music program, and performs in numerous recitals.

Adamek has led an active performing career giving solo and chamber music performances across Poland, Germany, Austria, Lithuania, France, China, USA, and Canada, with repertoire ranging from the classical period to the contemporary music. Her long-term artistic project involves promoting piano music by composers from her native country: Fryderyk Chopin, Karol Szymanowski, Maria Szymanowska, and Feliks Nowowiejski. Over the past few years the artistic project concerning Nowowiejski involved world premiere recordings of Nowowiejski’s music for piano solo, doctoral essay devoted to Nowowiejski’s music for piano solo (“Piano Works by Feliks Nowowiejski.”) as well as both national and international lectures, solo performances, and presentations (College Music Society Conference at the University of Colorado at Denver in 2005, at the University of Toronto in 2005, lecture recital at the University of Alberta in 2005), the book The Unknown face of Feliks Nowowiejski: The Piano Works, published by VDM in Germany in 2008.

Her projects have also been generously supported by Wirth Institute for Austrian and Central European Studies at University of Alberta, the Polonia Foundation of Alberta, Polish Culture Society of Edmonton, Polish Federation of Women in Edmonton, Polish Combatants Society of Edmonton, Consulate General of the Republic of Poland in Vancouver, and the Alberta Registered Music Teachers’ Association.

Magdalena Adamek is the winner of 2nd prize and a special distinction for the best performance of piano works by Frederick Chopin at the International Milosz Magin Piano Competition in Paris, 3rd prize in the piano trio category at the Kiejstut Bacewicz International Chamber Music Competition in Łódz, Poland, 3rd prize at the National Piano Competition in Warsaw, and distinction at the National Chamber Music Competition in Warsaw. She also represented Poland at the II European Piano Forum at the Hochschule der Künste in Berlin.

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